Search Results For: "Our Favorite Local Records of 2011"

December 30, 2011

Our Favorite Local Records of 2011: #1 Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

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We’ve counted down our 10 Favorite Local Records of 2011, see what made the Top 10. –

#1. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop)

Since the release of their critically acclaimed self-titled debut album and EP Sun Giant in 2008, the Fleet Foxes have been credited and blamed for a lot in Seattle. The resurrection of a new Sub Pop. The resurgence of folk music, locally, nationally and internationally. A reinvigorated international interest in the music being made in Seattle. They’ve been heralded and hounded for their contributions to what it means to make music and listen to music in Seattle.

That’s a Sisyphean load for a 20-something (or anyone) to bear, and facing a world that was watching, a city and Internet full of opinions and the words “sophomore slump” hanging in the air, Robin Pecknold struggled. For years. Entire albums were scrapped in the making of Helplessness Blues. And while I would never wish it on someone, I am thankful for his struggle. Because from it came an album about the existential angst of what it means to be a success, not just as an artist, but as a human being. Pecknold’s angst may have been magnified living under a microscope in a way that few are, but this personal album is made a masterpiece by its universalism.

Yes, a masterpiece. Sixty listens in, I still hear something new every play of Helplessness Blues and when I say in sixty years I think I will too, it’s no exaggeration.

The material and the musicality is stormier, the lyrics starker and the orchestration unsettling. Zither, Moog, bass clarinet, mixed with skillful picking and Yeats inspired prose show what studious students of both traditional and modern folk the Fleet Foxes are. In the ‘60s you would have said the band had created a wall of sound on Helplessness Blues, but today I’d say its more of an ecosystem rich with detail. An immense album of varied landscapes and climates: the windswept hillsides of “The Plains / Bitter Dancer,” a teeming marketplace of smells and sounds in “Bedouin Dress,” the warm white paved streets of “Sim Sala Bim.” These places are never described, they are never named, but the music takes you there vividly.

Helplessness Blues, in the themes it tackles and in the geographical journey it takes, is huge. But life isn’t all big questions and forever vistas, and the play between the immensity and tininess of our lives grounds the record in a beautiful humanness. Pecknold examines life’s largest questions by attending to the smallest details: the scruffing of a dog’s neck under the table, a geometric patterned dress.

Most listens of Helplessness Blues leave me feeling overwhelmed. Not just by the scope and beauty of what I’ve heard but of the world around me, of what it means to live a fulfilled life. Or as Pecknold puts it himself in the album’s title track, “If I know only one thing it’s that everything that I see of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak.” Existence and the world around us are dumbfounding if you spend any time sitting and thinking about it all, look in the mirror too long and the form that stares back looks barely human, much less like ourselves. Helplessness Blues is that long look in the mirror where you’re not sure if what—or who—is staring back, whether it is beautiful or monstrosity or both.

For an album made with worry in its DNA, Helplessness Blues shows Fleet Foxes having made leaps thematically and musically and it shines with confidence as these songs play on the stereo or a live stage. Yet on “Someone to Admire,” Pecknold’s sparkling clear voice, a lithe vibrato quivering in its self-doubt, worries “After all is said and done I feel the same, all that I hoped would change within me stayed.” This dichotomy, that the strongest album of the year is at its heart deeply self-conscious of its very existence, is as fascinating to this listener as the lyrics or orchestration.

But as much self-conscious doubt there is, Helplessness Blues isn’t preoccupied with the struggle of existence, but the wonder of it, and in between the questions there are gratitudes, humble thanks for purpose, for success, and even, for failure. Most of all, for the chance to say and sing anything at all.

Helplessness Blues is a huge record. Sonically, commercially, philosophically. And its scope and impact, grand. But for me, Helplessness Blues is so much more than a skillfully made album or a sonic leap forward for a band or the pinnacle of music being made in the Pacific Northwest. These are songs I have gone to and used to understand and explain my own emotions at life’s largest moments, at passings and births. I have used them to help say goodbye forever and hello for the first time, to look in my own mirror and ask if I am content with what—or who—looks back and to move boldly forward to change when the answer was—or is—no. Helplessness Blues is more sage than song and I suspect I’ll be tapping into its wisdom and sense of wonder as long as I’m lucky enough to be part of this big, beautiful, overwhelming world.

“In that dream I could hardly contain it. All my life I will wait to attain it.”

December 29, 2011

Our Favorite Local Records of 2011: #2 Shabazz Palaces – Black Up

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We’re counting down our 10 favorite records released in the Pacific Northwest in 2011, follow along! –

#2 Shabazz Palaces – Black Up (Sub Pop)

“Just another….” review of Shabazz Palaces critically acclaimed, seminal demiurgical creation entitled Black Up.

What can I possibly say about this album that hasn’t already been offered up to the blogosphere universe in the most hyperbolic, inquisitive, sometimes misguided, corner office with a nice view of a city park, “Can Ishmael Butler’s third eye see my innermost thoughts?” analytical, tooth and comb way imaginable?

I have no idea. That’s why I’m going to be as direct (doubtful) and brief (you’re kidding right?) as I can possibly be. Gentle readers, good luck connecting the dots.

When I was a pre-teen I saw an interview with Thurston Moore on a television program that I can no longer remember. During the interview Mr. Moore spoke of how he looked to find melody in ordinary, everyday things, because there are melodies all around us. Items such as the creaky sounds from a wheel barrow, lawnmowers cutting the grass and windshield wipers defending your windshield against trying precipitation. I tried my best to accurately ride the jock of Thurston to emulate Thurston’s words and write songs based on microwave sounds and people falling down/up the stairs (this didn’t happen often). However, I did not have the mental capacity then (and arguably now) to be inspired enough to compose and craft anything that anyone would wanted to be bothered to listen to.

As soon as I hit play on Black Up, Thurston Moore’s words awoke in my mind after a cicada-like slumber and it all made sense.

Hear me out.

This album is based on melodies you don’t hear but feel. It’s a pretentious, vague sentence but one that is totally applicable. Sure, you hear the rhythm and melody in an audible fashion. Yet, when you think of the creation of this music as a listener (ie. the accusatory synthesizer chanting of “An Echo From the Hosts…”), it’s extremely hard to understand how one arrives at the end point when you’re starting from thin air radio silence.

If I could choose a solitary word to define this album (impossible) it would be “otherworldly.” There are celestial/outer-space references littered throughout almost every song. When I listen to Black Up, I think of George Clinton fronting Parliament-Funkadelic. I am reminded of the autonomus, uplifting groove of Sly and the Family Stone. Even though the aforementioned imprints are a bit obvious (in my opinion), I may be alone in reminiscing about my love fo Radiohead’s Kid A or Bjork’s Vespertine while Black Up is emerging from my sound-system. For me, it’s all there in plain view, Afrocentric spaceship funk.

I’m not going to explain what this album sounds like if you haven’t heard it. It’s not out of laziness, it’s because it’s not really possible…

Screw it. I’ll give it a shot.

“Endeavors for Never….” sounds like heroin inspired android jazz in the throes of Harlem in the 1930′s 3030′s. At first listen I could not fit all the elements of this song into a cohesive structure, but upon further review this might be the most “normal” back-beat on this album. Keys operating close to conventional timing, smooth as silk female vocals, a stirring sample of a lazy jazz drum fill, “forever and ever.” I don’t mind if you do, play it again Sam.

“Are you…” has an intro that reminds me of the greatest album of all-time! has an intro that sounds like a Kid A/Amnesiac b-side. The mantra “it’s a feeling,” takes over the song, reiterating that this album is much more than just sounds, it exists purely in the way that your body responds to the rhythm.  Those verses paint a story and trick your hips into a predictable lull. However, by the end of the song you’re grooving to beats that would not be out of place on Of Light or the self-titled release. Finally, the line “That’s why, I won’t be back a long time….” is placed conveniently in the apex of a dance hall collapse. No smoke, no fire or panic, just a clear-cut explanation.

The words on this album carry more weight than before (and they were already on the shoulders of Atlas to begin with). “A Treatise Dedicated..(1000 Questions, 1 Answer)” is an example of the interpolation (very literal when you hear the story told within the song) of a theme that was largely absent on prior Shabazz Palaces releases, love. When I first heard this song, I thought of another unconventional “love” song in Outkast’s “Toilet Tisha.” The music, the story, the promises that are made are spectacular, but what really makes the song are the unanswered questions at the of composition. Internalized and all too real, whether posed from across a crowded room or while you’re lying in bed alone at night. It’s amazing how little things make a song.

But what about the meaning behind the album’s title, Black Up? Is there any meaning there or is it something that I’ve imagined after dozens of listens?

The theme of being genuine is a consistent one throughout the entire album. Butler asks the listener who they think they are on the album’s second track and does not stop asking until the album is over. “Youlogy” serves as a curtain call for materialism and the feigned. “Yeah you” is a St. Valentine’s Day Massacre for artists and industry personalities that have made a living off of posturing. “My hand’s so flush/You’ll have to fold/The played out rhthyms that you told/For all the priceless things you sold..you corny nigga.” You can’t tell if that sample is money being dropped into a piggy bank or slaves’ chains are clanging in unison. Either way, there might not be a difference between the two.

But what does this have to do with being black per se? When Butler says “…Things are looking blacker but black is looking whiter,” is he talking about how corporate America is attempting to adopt hip-hop culture in order to push product (nothing new)? Is he refering to the fact that many of these hip-hop artists are running around wearing skinny jeans and starring in wholesome family movies? Or maybe he’s speaking about Obama and the fact that blacks are “more accepted” by American culture across the board?

I’m not sure, I feel it’s up for the listener to decide. One thing I do know is this, there is really nothing more infuriating, agitating, aggrevating, insert many other unfavorable synonyms here than when someone questions your blackness. If you’re black, it’s happened to you more times than you can count unfortunately. It doesn’t matter where you’re from or where you’re going, someone is going to level those systemic accusations in your general direction. It might arise from your educational background, your demeanor or a myriad of cultural factors that may be mired in preconceived stereotype or ignorance. The worst part is, not just black people question your blackness, everyone feels like they are entitled to express an opinion on how black you are or aren’t. I could write a thesis on this topic (again) but this is an album review and I’ve already said too much. I’ll leave you with this….

Black Up is saying, “Black folks, be you, whatever ‘you’ that may be. You are beautiful.” Many, many albums have expressed this type of sentiment before, but I can’t recall any that presented it in the type of fashion Shabazz Palaces have done so on Black Up. Just think, the fact that I thought of Thurston Moore, Bjork and Radiohead (I could have even said some Boards of Canada as well) during the initial moments of this album and none of those artists have ever had anything to do with being black or black empowerment, is a remarkable achievement in itself.

You don’t have to listen to the last minute and a half of “Swerve…” to comprehend what is going on here.

(Writer’s note: This applies to listeners of all races but, hey, I’m black so……)

December 28, 2011

Our Favorite Local Records Of 2011: #3 Zoe Muth and The Lost High Rollers – Starlight Hotel

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We’re counting down our 10 favorite records released in the Pacific Northwest in 2011, follow along! –

#3 Zoe Muth & The Lost High Rollers – Starlight Hotel (Signature Sounds)

My review earlier this year of Zoe Muth’s stirring sophomore album of new classic country classics was about timelessness. About the things that last in this changing world, the immovable in spite of it all and the main metaphor was the titular hotel of Muth’s record: the Starlight Hotel.

The Starlight Hotel sits on the corner of old Ballard Avenue and NW Vernon Place, a stalwart of “old Ballard” before the condos and sushi joints moved in. It’s a roach motel that has kept its curtains tightly drawn for most of my 30 years, with a door I’ve never seen opened. The Starlight Hotel has stood unchanged by time, a seedy mystery on a familiar strip. It’s a building whose presence conjures vivid stories of its inhabitants just by existing — people down on their luck in life and in love, chasing dreams, but settling for well whiskey and one-night stands. That the Starlight Hotel has survived, decade after decade, as Ballard has changed seems to scream: “You might look different, but you’re still making the same old mistakes.”

And wouldn’t you know it, not long after the review was published and its namesake album was all I wanted to play, the Starlight Hotel succummed to the seasons of change and became “Hotel Ballard.” A boutique hotel with gaudy black chandeliers in the lobby and crystal clear windows to replace the grimy shutters of the long-standing roach motel. I may have never stepped foot in the Starlight Hotel, I may have never wanted to, but damn if I don’t miss it.

So while the album’s namesake may not have lasted forever, I think Muth’s tribute to it will. Because Starlight Hotel is made up of songs that sound just as at home today as they would have 30 years ago and just as at home as they will 30 years from now. Because there has always been and there will always be an appreciative audience for songs about good women who fall for bad men, anthems for good people with bad jobs and tales about just eking by in life with good songs, bad choices and the comfort we find in both. Zoe writes some of the finest of these songs being written not just today, but ever. Her lyricism evokes the greats: the Willie’s, the Waylon’s, the Tammy’s and Dolly’s. And her backing band is, for my money, the best in Seattle. Country Dave Harmonson’s pedal steel work is some of the most personality-filled playing you’ll ever hear–it sobs and sneers and winks–and Ethan Lawton’s mandolin picking is both the delicate flourish and unrelenting workhorse of the album.

Starlight Hotel is a country album and it is an exceptional one. Its a country album for folks who think country died in the ’70s, when country was still country and pop was still pop. But it’s just as much a country album for folks who think they hate country music. Yes, the instrumentation is as classic as it gets, but so are the songs. These are songs that sound better every listen, but feel like an old friend the first time you hit play.

December 27, 2011

Our Favorite Local Records of 2011: #4 – Cataldo Prison Boxing

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We’re counting down our 10 favorite records released in the Pacific Northwest in 2011, follow along! –

#4 Cataldo – Prison Boxing (Red Pepper Records)

“Let’s begin, at the end, of bad year, with bad things at my back. The tragic truth I’ve been slow in learning, is there are certain breaths you simply can’t retract.” – Deep Cuts

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a hopeless romantic, with an emphasis on “hopeless.” Hardly untrod ground as far as music goes I know, yet the the lyrical imagery and presentation of Cataldo’s latest self-released record Prison Boxing seems to do so convincingly and with intriguing results. Those first words of “Deep Cuts” feel like the ominous opening lines to a novel, setting the stage with expectations for troublesome consequences. Following shortly after the refrain ”the songs I spend on her never stop repeating“ perfectly preludes a record documenting a life of struggles in love. Along with “Deep Cuts,” “Don’t Lose that Feeling,” “Reach out And Touch Someone’s Hand” and “Prison Boxing” are all multi-dimensional portrayals dressed up as some of this year’s catchiest pop songs, personal and detailed enough to conjure up vivid pictures of complex relationships and the forces that might define them.

With acoustic guitar and a philosophical streak, lead vocalist and lyricist Eric Anderson could be that intimate companion to help you pull yourself up off the couch. A friend to over-analyze your bullshit with and put it in sober perspective, he’s someone with just the right story or thing to say to help you get over yourself and courtesy of his cohorts just the right orchestral chorus to bring up your mood. The soaring horns of “Rock of Calvary” join “Fog on the Glass” and “Don’t Lose that Feeling” as the standouts in this regard. The quiet moments carry no judgement, only staring truth in the eye and the resolve to move on with grace. “Moving on” is a thematic thread that’s woven from the fist note of the record to the last, and its realization is at constant odds with the connections we won’t or can’t ever leave behind. That “Prison Boxing” was chosen as the records name and thus representative track is no coincidence I think.

Any trouble alluded to earlier that our hero is moving on from probably stems from being too honest, too attached, and too open with his feelings. Sure that might be romantic, but as this record tells the tale, it does him no favors either. It makes encounters with your past awkward as hell and brushes with heartbreak a regular fact of living. When “searching for the heart of a thing” he accepts in ‘Deep Cuts’, “so it goes.” Midway through the tracklist “My Heart is Calling” takes a vacation from Anderson’s usually loquacious TMI and goes emotionally overboard delivering a vintage sounding stalker pop track that’s paired in dark possessiveness with the song directly after it “The Things You Need to Know.” Among a album largely populated by clear-eyed remainders these songs represent exactly the opposite. In professing love so desperately this interlude represents an unusual low for the our emerging antihero.

That the record is then book-ended by the largely upbeat “Fog on the Glass,” “Don’t Lose That Feeling,” and “Reach out and Touch Someone’s Hand,” feels a realization of that sought after grace. In getting over that “[feeling] when your looking back it would make you sick to get past the past” as ‘Fog on the Glass’ so concisely frames the tension, were coming to terms with that which he can’t divorce ourselves from. This record culminating with statements of personal redemption wasn’t assured based on those opening indications from “Deep Cuts.” That our protagonist remained a hopeless romantic assured that redemption would be inevitable.

“There’s no doubt, it’s time to make some new plans, so reach out, and touch someone’s hand” -The final lines to “Reach Out and Touch Someone’s Hand”

December 26, 2011

Our Favorite Local Records of 2011: #5 Bryan John Appleby – Fire on the Vine

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We’re counting down our 10 favorite records released in the Pacific Northwest in 2011, follow along! –

#5: Bryan John Appleby – Fire on the Vine (self-released, with the help of Kickstarter)

The first thing I wrote about for this blog was a Bryan John Appleby house show I ventured into nervously on one of my very first days in Seattle. At the time he had only an EP out, Shoes for Men and Beasts, that spins with such beguiling poetic prettiness that I could not take it off repeat until the release of Fire on the Vine. In only a few songs I was captured, and from that first house show, I could see others were as well. He has the quiet ability to still even the most easily distracted prisoners of the bright digital age, and send them wandering into the rare storybook stanzas he sings – more Whitman than Pecknold, more Thomas Hardy than Head and the Heart.

When Appleby released Fire on the Vine, he took those charming stories and blew them up as big as the sky. An album with swelling harmonies and lush adornment that floods the room to the rafters, it begins with the whir and click of slides going by, and behaves as a beautiful sort of score to an unidentified slideshow of someone’s (maybe everyone’s?) gorgeous and faded memory.

Dealing abstractly with issues of God, of the heart, of the mortality we all face even when young and dizzy, the songs touch on every question without offering definite answers. One of the songs that comes back to me especially on crystal December nights is “Honey Jars”, the second to last track on the record. Opening with callouses on steel and a single deft muted beat, running like a gentle and stubborn pulse, the story of an old man at the end of his life unravels. A sparse, hushed love letter to his departed companion and the yellowing corners of nostalgias, Appleby sings from the other end of being:

Though I’m blind my dear, I see The parade goes on without me My body aches, my mind it weeps For you, for you

Fire on the Vine’s stand out verse isn’t the only element that places Appleby far outside the amalgam of folk driven singer songwriters. The album has an cleverness of arrangement to it, with impeccable rhythm holding the vocals and lacing melody tight together. It’s a record that stands at the intersection of intelligence and feeling, comfortably and confidently. Appleby has opened his lungs and blown the dust from the worn grooves of the singer songwriters tiredly muttering over the necks of their guitars. He has made everything we remember brand new again.

December 23, 2011

Our Favorite Local Records of 2011: #6 – Radiation City – The Hands that Take You

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We’re counting down our 10 favorite records released in the Pacific Northwest in 2011, follow along! –

#6. Radiation City – The Hands That Take You (Tender Loving Empire)

Turn it up loud on the Hi-Fi and dive into the aquarium with me. Let the stereo sound wash over your entire body and put you in this room with these four instruments and as many voices. Close your eyes. You are in that room. The music bounces back and forth between your ears and the voices echo forever against the tall walls. Randy’s drum is just to your right but pointed away from you, Cameron Spies’ guitar a little further back on your left and Lizzy Ellison’s Rhodes is dead center, the bass stands in front of a set of stacks of speakers behind her. You are in the same room. This is certainly pop though like none I’ve heard, and this use of stereo is just one of many elements distinguishing Radiation City’s effort on The Hands that Take You.

Full of bold and sometimes unexpected melodies and yes, harmony-thick choruses, each song finds its own 3-dimensional texture. Instead of relying on predictable verse patterns with obvious changes or simply being a guitar-focused band these are songs by a symphony of four traversing movements and themes in the grandest possible way. The mix itself brings the audience in closer to Ellison as an intimate song might require and then has them step back to the center of the room to really realize the sound bouncing in every direction. This type of attention to detail is another hallmark of this record, this varied development of mood as each individual theme dictates.

Track One “Babies” is exactly what you think it’s about, the uneasy thrill of fresh motherhood, the relieved and excited but frightened feeling that there is probably a special literary word for in French, but Radiation City has so kindly translated for us in their own way. “Summer is Not an Act I” was the first track to emerge from this record, and as if Grizzly Bear were fronted by Portishead’s Beth Gibbons this track caught my interest immediately and kept it. Track 6 “Salsaness” changes pace entirely as the band visits the dancehall with a playfully produced pop song, one of a Latin American vintage not usually expected this far north. “Park” then turns 180 degrees again with guitarist Spies taking the lead vocal and its ever transforming shape in a constant state of teasing its heart-swollen hook of “Ba! Ba! Ba dada da’s” and “Ooooh-aaaah-oooh’s.”

Though not married to any of pop’s obvious frameworks or tried-and-true ingredients, and seemingly not dedicated to any particular formula at all for that matter, these songs aren’t lacking in their capacity for catchiness. Instead those moments that do hew to familiar interpretations of pop stand out that much more, the catchiness is condensed for maximum effect. Instead of wearing out their hooks by over use and draining the listener’s energy (or tolerance), when they do appear the hook is that much more effective, when they end it abruptly you already want more. A clever use of layered voicings, the use of “Oooohs” in general, the doubling of vocals, and a hefty dose of reverb amounts to it’s own ever-present hook of sorts, providing Ellison with her own virtual choir of forty as vocal accompaniment instead of just three others. Impressively, aside from the overused “Ba Ba” and the like (that’s admittedly fun a hell to sing along to), each song on The Hands that Take You succeeds in representing its own distinct identity. The record as a whole is varied, and engaging front-to-back in that unpredictability. It’s an impressive sound to count as Radiation City’s debut, and our favorite record out of Portland in 2011.

The Hands that Take You arrived via Radiation City’s DIY label Apes Tapes thanks to Portland’s Tender Loving Empire.

December 22, 2011

Our Favorite Local Records of 2011: #7 – My Goodness – S/T

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Over the next two weeks we’ll be counting down our 10 favorite records released in the Pacific Northwest in 2011. Follow along! –

#7. My Goodness – s/t

If notable echoes of Seattle’s musical history as a rock town exist, it is surely in the persons of Joel Schneider and Ethan Jacobsen who make up My Goodness. More mutant blues than anything else, My Goodness is certainly hard rock but not “grunge,” stylistically and topically drawing further back to Seattle’s original rockstars the Sonics. Like the Sonics debut 45 “The Witch” did for 1964, in 2011 with their self-titled debut out on Sarathan Records My Goodness are setting a high bar for local rock.

The unglamorous portraits of the young and stupid painted in My Goodness is a refreshing and sometimes ugly sight. Starting off the record is a triad of do-wrong songs “Blackout Baby,” “Cmon Doll” and “Cold Feet Killer.” All portray the shitty moment where object of affection transitions to an object of scorn. On this record the object of affection is in every case undeniably a woman. It isn’t entirely happy material and the knife edge of Schneider’s guitar tells that tale as much as the lyrics. Out of that world populated with party weary souls searching for escape, conniving women, and steadier relationships with a bottles than people “Let Me Free” captures a rare sober moment as our protagonist begs “I keep this mess going strong, for that alone come please help me.” Immediately following on “I’ve Got A Notion” the frustration reaches a boil as Schneider screams “Did you find another lover? One that’ll treat you nice? I could have kept them all believin’, that you’d found your Mr. Right.” This is the sound of crashing breakers of testosterone as the tide comes in. Schneider’s words and delivery progress later in the record toward contemplations, but the heat and the raw ‘blues’ in his voice never completely dissipates.

Throughout Schneider’s vocal delivery is gritty and unaffected and his muscular guitar slashes through Jacobsen’s hurricane of cymbals, floor toms and bass drum. For this record alone Jacobsen deserves a nod for 2011′s best local drumming performance; he’s so big, you could be forgiven for thinking this band has two drummers per current trends. Uh-uh. This is just one guitar and one drummer. One of the biggest selling bands in America right now prove it a robust formula, and it’s an arrangement that’s certainly working for My Goodness.

December 21, 2011

Our Favorite Local Records of 2011: #8 Wild Flag – s/t

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Over the next two weeks we’ll be counting down our 10 favorite records released in the Pacific Northwest in 2011. Follow along! –

#8. Wild Flag – Wild Flag (Merge)

Composed of two-thirds of Sleater-Kinney and members of Helium, Quasi, and The Minders, Wild Flag has certainly got, as they say, chops. It’s not surprising that the Portland band’s debut was greeted with a media frenzy and waves of audience adulation. It is possibly surprising that these veterans of the coarse, political nineties have produced in their eponymous full-length a strong candidate for the feel-good album of the year.

I mean, mostly, the way it physically makes you feel. From the opening rhythms of “Romance” – which begins, appropriately, “Hey, can you feel it?” – the energy is undeniable and inescapable. Janet Weiss’ muscular drums are the music’s bobbing head; Carrie Brownstein’s vocals a fist pump, a pelvic thrust; Mary Timony’s sinuous voice its swaying hips. As the beat pushes you solidly into your body, psychedelic guitar warps coax you out of your mind. Dancing is not an option; it becomes a physical need.

Meanwhile, hedonistic, carpe-diem lyrics are constantly writing the checks that your ass is busy cashing. “Don’t try to fight it, ’cause you won’t / Let go, it’s not wrong,” instructs the trippy garage-rock closer “Black Tiles.” “For all we know we’re just here / For the length of the song.” “Short Version” advises, “If you want to thrill us / Stop staring with your little frown / When the feeling comes / You gotta throw your weary body down.”

The drums roll on, sometimes faster than arms should be able to move. The hypnotic psych-riffs loop. Even in its quietest times, Wild Flag is an upbeat romp; in the biggest moments it winds up into a full-on bacchanal. Wild Flag traverses the borderlands of dance music and rock ‘n’ roll, gathering the essence of both: the gut connection, the ruthless punch to the lower chakras. The glorious abandonment of your psychological constraints and the surrender to your physical urges. Throw off the sandbags and fucking MOVE.

December 20, 2011

Our Favorite Local Records Of 2011: #9 Kelli Schaefer – Ghost of the Beast

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Over the next two weeks we’ll be counting down our 10 favorite records released in the Pacific Northwest in 2011. Follow along! –

#9 Kelli Schaefer – Ghost of the Beast (Amigo/Amiga)

Kelli Schaefer does not want us to settle in and get comfortable. Opening track on her breathtaking debut, Ghost of the Beast, is “The Fury”- a five-minute song with shifting distortion and distant melody peeking through industrial drums and choral “ooh”s from the wrong side of the train tracks. From there she launches into the title track of the record with scratching on metal, low piano crashes, all wrapped in the silver warmth of flute rubbing up against Schaefer’s raw, honeyed vocals. It left me unsettled, but captivated. Squirming in my seat, but staying there.

What brings you in to stay a while with this album from the beginning to the end is Schaefer’s voice, both what she sings and how she does it. With honesty that would make Abe blush, Schaefer sings in a clean, open timbre right through the thin shrouds and thick walls of what keeps us bound and terrified.

Through the record, Schaefer has penned tracks where her voice seems like it’s going to crack from the weight of everything, like she is using kick drum and her massive, spine tingling wail to slay something deep within humanity. In no more than a breath, she can switch from songs that unashamedly and loudly grapple with the irreverent, to tunes like “Gone in Love” that spin so delicate and pretty they can turn breath and regret into gold.

Kelli is not resting on her laurels, musically speaking. In fact, she doesn’t seem to rest much. An album about growing pains too big not to scream out into the loneliness, Schaefer’s debut has a dynamism many artists work their entire careers to accomplish, and a voice so important she mesmerizes audiences, while never asking for it.

Ghost of the Beast is full of such tattered splendor and truth, it feels familiar and impossibly new and different at the same time. So settle in as best you can, and don’t worry about that wall you’ve been building up. This will take care of it for you.

December 19, 2011

Our Favorite Local Records of 2011: #10 Gold Leaves – The Ornament

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Over the next two weeks we’ll be counting down our 10 favorite records released in the Pacific Northwest in 2011. We can tell you and enumerate 10 (after much debating), but we can’t tell you what our 17th and 23rd favorite records are (and keep a straight face), so after the new year we’ll also be sharing 25 other unmissable records from the Pacific Northwest. What can we say, 2011 was a very very good year to be a local music lover in Cascadia.

#10: Gold Leaves – The Ornament (Hardly Art)

When we look back at 2011’s musical output, much like our smart phone “polaroids”, I imagine we’ll cringe at the heavy-handed retro touches and never-ending nostalgia. Under the cross processing and “Hipstamat-acizing” of popular culture, we’re lost in a longing for a time and place that probably never existed. Most of it, like so many of those physical photos of old that our futuristic phones are mimicking, will be thrown out and forgotten, looked upon as quaint remnants from an unsophisticated era and technology.

But some of those photos and songs and sounds transcend the technology and the trend and stand beautifully on their own. Like Gold Leaves gorgeous debut album The Ornament. While it surely mines the retro sounds that are popular right now, there’s a warm wisdom to Grant Olsen’s lyrics and the album’s orchestration. A timelessness. Like the worn yellowed pages of your favorite book. With ‘60s psychedelic soul flourishes, a touch of Lee Hazelwood there, a little rolling timpani and bright, swelling strings here … The Ornament borrows from the best of the past, but is never stuck in it.

The album is steady, there is no crazy crescendo musically or lyrically, but this is not background music. The Ornament is a thoughtful character study not a blow-em-up, and if you don’t pay attention the grandeur of its scope will be lost on you. The Ornament paints sprawling landscapes about the minute and the momentous parts of life. And Olsen is more of an impressionist than a realist. The swirling imagery of passing time, places we hold dear even if we are there but a moment, the relationships we think will last a lifetime that don’t, losing the ones that do and how we are our own only constant companion. Olsen’s lyrics would be beautiful were they just words on a page, but with his honeyed delivery, the ragged warmth of his voice and the enveloping orchestration provided by Papercuts’ Jason Quever, they are poems and painting and songs, all at once.

Download two songs from The Ornament:

The Ornament Cruel or Kind